The Newsom-Trump Beef Heats Up

Transcript

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Speaker 17 Yeah, it's true. You're not a journalist, but you're something.
I don't know what you are.

Speaker 17 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 18 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 17 I am about to be in a city that is having a military parade, Scott. I am wishing I had gotten out of town.
We'll talk about that in a minute.

Speaker 18 Oh, are you in L.A.?

Speaker 17 I'm in D.C. No, I'm not L.A.
There's nothing. I have all the tanks here.
That's where the actual insurrection is going on. That's what I caught.

Speaker 18 Literally, why doesn't he just stay at home?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 18 And like

Speaker 18 masturbate the apprentice martial law episode or something.

Speaker 18 I don't know.

Speaker 17 I don't know.

Speaker 18 There's tanks. Can you believe it? A military,

Speaker 17 a military parade.

Speaker 17 The last time I was recalling one was during

Speaker 17 the first Bush administration.

Speaker 17 It was after something with Iraq. I don't know.
It was something. But he had a lot of military people, and it was very disconcerting.
And it wasn't like this gang here. It's like there's a lot here.

Speaker 17 It's sort of like North Korea plus. old Russia kind of stuff.
And the only thing I remember is a stealth bomber going down the mall in Washington from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

Speaker 17 And it was terrifying. I was like, this is not America, like the stealth bomber, even though it was cool and enormous, but it was just chilling to the entire crowd.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I mean, we don't want to put tanks on the ground in Ukraine as Russian troops pour over the border, but a guy wants to roll out tanks as he, you know, shit posts or tweets from a golf cart in orthopedic shoes.

Speaker 18 I mean, the whole thing is just such cosplaying masculinity. It's so weird.
It's so

Speaker 17 sad. It keeps every one of these things.
I'm thinking, how small is this? Well, anyway. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Elon groveling and Trump and China making nice for now.

Speaker 17 And just for everyone to know, next week, Scott and I will be together in France again.

Speaker 17 Is that right?

Speaker 17 Trip to France.

Speaker 18 They tried to keep this out.

Speaker 17 So it's the impenetrable Maginot Line. Do you have a French accent? Was that your French?

Speaker 18 I used to do amazing accents. Now it sounds like

Speaker 18 a dead language that twins speak to each other.

Speaker 18 I could do an amazing glasswegian accent

Speaker 17 you couldn't oh my god you could even do pepe lepe that famous uh date rapist pepe lepeu you could do that uh

Speaker 17 you didn't love pepe lepe oh my god he's it's so bad when you watch it now it's literally

Speaker 17 literally harvey weinstein of come here my love of cartoons it really is you're like like go back and look at it all right between

Speaker 18 Pepe Le Pue,

Speaker 18 I Dream a Genie,

Speaker 18 and what was the other really sexist thing I was watching? All of the time. Oh, my God.

Speaker 17 The 33's comfort. Oh, the price is right.
And now a new car and a woman in a bathing suit showing you the new car. That one was tame compared to like,

Speaker 17 oh, they're all terrible. I liked I Dream of Genie.
I hate to say it, but it was really sexist with that outfit. Yes, Master.

Speaker 18 Genie, go to your bottle. Is it, I'm literally the, everyone should, should just appreciate how far I've come.

Speaker 17 How far I have come.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Why? Why have you come? You, you liked I Dream of Genie. I liked I I Dream of Genie.
I still like I Dream of Genie. I'm sorry, Barbara, you didn't wrong.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I wouldn't, but watching, I'm not exaggerating. I watched Two Hours Day, I Dream of Genie during my formative years.

Speaker 18 And I'm not sure that was the right baseline level for how you interact with women.

Speaker 17 I did the same thing. That's why we love each other.

Speaker 17 I loved I Dream of Genie. I watched it all the time.

Speaker 18 Oh, I bet you did, you little lesbian.

Speaker 17 Yeah, my little lesbian. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 18 I think essentially Jeff Bezos is this, is I Dream of Genie. He finds a 2,000-year-old magical woman with Botox and instead of freeing her, makes her his roommate.

Speaker 18 It's Jeff Bezos. It's literally Jeff Bezos' I Dream of Genie.

Speaker 17 Anyway, kids look at I Dream of Genie and watch it sometime. It's really, it's a classic.
Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, as I said.

Speaker 17 Elon groveling and Trump and China making nice for now, but there's a lot going on, including the protests against Trump administration's immigration raids are now spreading nationwide.

Speaker 17 Nice job, Trump. Trump is claiming that Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated without National Guard deployment, which is a flat-out lie.

Speaker 17 Talk to anybody in Los Angeles. It's ridiculous, unless you're watching Fox News and then it's true.
He also deployed 700 Marines in the L.A.

Speaker 17 area against the objections of every single group of people, most of whom don't get along.

Speaker 17 In recent days, Trump has floated invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that grants the president the authority to deploy the military on U.S. soil.
It's a big move.

Speaker 17 California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has gotten a lot of attention and is doing quite a good job pushing back, spoke out about Trump's actions in a televised address on Tuesday, calling this a perilous moment for democracy.

Speaker 17 Let's listen to some of that speech.

Speaker 20 California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.
Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes.
This moment we have feared has arrived.

Speaker 20 He's taking a wrecking ball. a wrecking ball to our founding fathers' historic project, three co-equal branches of independent government.
There are no longer any checks and balances.

Speaker 20 Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.
The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.

Speaker 17 Well done, Gavin. I have to say,

Speaker 17 he's taken every opportunity here to show himself off, which he is. More protests are expected this weekend, tied to the massive military parade in D.C.

Speaker 17 that's official, as I noted, celebrating the Army's 250th birthday, but just so happens to fall on Trump's 79th birthday, which will call attention to the fact that the man is really old.

Speaker 17 The No Kings protests are set to be the largest nationwide mobilization since Trump took office. These look like astonishing, actually.
They're all over the place.

Speaker 17 Trump is already warning that any protesters at the parade will be met with very big force, whatever that is. They are allowed to protest, by the way, FYI.

Speaker 17 But many of the No Kings people are saying don't protest in D.C. and give them a reason to attack us, but they are pretty much nationwide.
First, let's talk about Newsom.

Speaker 17 And then let me just also add that Tom Cotton, as usual, popped up like a bad penny with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled Send in the Troops for Real, playing off his infamous New York Times op-ed in 2020.

Speaker 17 We're recording this ahead of Trump's military parade, which is on Saturday.

Speaker 17 Talk a little bit about Newsom, Trump, these protests.

Speaker 17 It feels very North Korean Korean to me, but your thoughts.

Speaker 18 I think Newsom has basically identified himself right now. I think he's the big winner in all of this.

Speaker 18 I think he kind of accidentally has become the spokesperson for the pushback. So I think this, one of the silver linings here is that it is

Speaker 18 we now have what is kind of a de facto leader of the Democratic Party. And I think it's essentially Governor Newsom leads the fourth largest economy in the world.

Speaker 18 It's a net giver in terms of federal tax income for all the problems California has.

Speaker 18 It's actually on most metrics doing really well. Whether it's a center of the newest technology in the world, more people are moving back to California now.

Speaker 18 And California has more billionaires than any other state. And these are people with options for all the shitposting these techno-libertarians like to do about California.

Speaker 18 They could move anywhere in the world and they decide to stay in. Sea above California.

Speaker 17 That's why I, Scott, they're all back, just so you know. Yeah, you've been saying that for a while.

Speaker 18 You said there was going to be a boomerang, and you were right.

Speaker 17 Because of AI, especially.

Speaker 18 So look, and anyone who has driven up, driven up Highway 1 or

Speaker 18 checked out the Surfers or Zuma Beach or been to the Hollywood Bowl, or I mean, it's just, or, or been in the desert, it's

Speaker 18 been the sunset in the desert or been to Carmel or Yosemite. I mean, you just.

Speaker 17 It's a stunning state.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it's, it is, it, it's, it's arguably the most beautiful country in the world. It just happens to be a state within the United States, and it offers the best universities, best technology.

Speaker 18 Anyway, he has become sort of overnight, kind of the spokesperson for or the leader of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 18 The bad news here is that I think a lot of these protesters are playing into Trump's hands. And that is,

Speaker 18 you can't tell people how to protest, but when you see images,

Speaker 18 So, for example,

Speaker 18 if you could give the protesters, if the protesters are generally trying to help their own cause, and that is say, look, a lot of us have been here for 10 years.

Speaker 18 It's one thing if you want to deport criminals, but if you're deporting people, if you're rounding up people at a Home Depot that have paid their taxes for 20 years and then going to their schools and their churches, I don't think most people are on board with that.

Speaker 17 No, they're not. According to the polling, not at all, but go ahead.

Speaker 18 But in my opinion, they hurt their own cause when they show up with more Mexican flags than American flags. And I understand what they're doing, but keep in mind a lot of Trump supporters.

Speaker 18 And a lot of moderates, when they see protesters with Mexican flags, they think invasion.

Speaker 18 And the things things that really hurt this protest in my mind, and there's nothing you can do about it because it's free speech, when someone shows up with a Palestinian flag and a mask, what people see as terrorism.

Speaker 18 So, and unfortunately, the media will cover those limited instances, which are 0.01% of these protests, as opposed to covering a really thoughtful civil protest with signs.

Speaker 18 And that's what most of this is.

Speaker 18 And just to show you how incredibly asinine this is, how the snake is eating its own tail, Is that if who is the National Guard that's been pulled or deployed or activated?

Speaker 17 A lot of them are cops.

Speaker 18 A lot of them are people who work in law enforcement, and a lot of them are in this division called the Rattlesnakes that Governor Newsom uses for fire reclamation or clearing out brush.

Speaker 18 And then they get called up to the National Guard. But during the day, if they get called up to be police officers or if the LAPD gets called up, the LAPD is being deployed.

Speaker 18 Additional LADPD forces are being deployed to where the National Guard is because the National Guard's presence increases hostilities and likelihoods of violence. Right.

Speaker 17 Which is why the police department is like, get the fuck out of here. Like, we're handling it.

Speaker 18 So the LAPD has to be deployed to protect the National Guard, who is creating problems and dissent and agitator where there doesn't need to be any.

Speaker 17 I do think that is sinking into people. They're like, what are they doing here? And especially in areas, I think the protests, I get it.

Speaker 17 They're going to play the picture of the burning Waymo over and over again. The flags don't look good.
But I think this weekend will be interesting because

Speaker 17 I think this No Kings thing

Speaker 17 could be really effective because I was just looking at some of the stuff and Amanda was pointing out to me, like, they have 20 different No Kings events in Maine.

Speaker 17 Like, and they're very oversubscribed. Kind of, they think a lot of people are going to show up.
So, if there's a peaceful show of support, I think Americans do like that. Agreed.

Speaker 18 But that's not what's getting the media right now.

Speaker 17 And the Republicans have tried to weaponize protesting, right?

Speaker 17 They're trying to say protesting is insurrection, when, in fact, of course, and because they're the most hypocritical group on the planet, you know, the real insurrection was, of course, that attack on the Capitol.

Speaker 17 And so

Speaker 17 when it suits them, they say protests are dangerous. When it suits them, they say they're patriotic tourist visits or or whatever they call it.
What I, I think they, they continue.

Speaker 17 I think penny seems to be dropping with a lot more people, I think, than you think. That it's like, what's the problem? I hope so.

Speaker 18 I really do, because

Speaker 18 I think that at the end of the day, this is, I mean, first off, let's go to some historical analogies here, right?

Speaker 18 Kent State, right? The Ohio National Guard hopped up on authority. In bad intel, basically killed four kids protesting the Vietnam War.

Speaker 18 And the governor called in troops to quote unquote restore order, right? That sounds familiar. He didn't restore anything.
He radicalized a generation and permanently scarred the American psyche.

Speaker 18 The really the best analogy here is Hitler in the 30s, the Reichstag fire decree, and that is he wanted to consolidate power. So when an autocrat wants to consolidate power,

Speaker 18 Essentially, Hitler didn't invade Poland to consolidate power. He invaded civil liberties.

Speaker 17 Yes, he did.

Speaker 18 Yeah. And

Speaker 18 the playbook here is, you use the threat of chaos to invoke emergency powers and suspend basic rights and criminalize dissent. And that's exactly what's going on here.
And this is essentially

Speaker 18 President Trump is lighting a match and kind of pointing at the smoke, so to speak.

Speaker 17 Which is why I do think there's a lot of pushback, a lot more pushback than

Speaker 17 you. I think there's a lot of pushback.
Every, every Democratic governor is now prepared, has seen his playbook

Speaker 17 are trying to handle this this in a different way.

Speaker 17 I think he's just incompetent at it. Now, I know, again, you don't have to be competent to be, to do this.
You can be cloddish and idiotic. But to me, I mean, the question is,

Speaker 17 which message will get through? And I do think Newsom has been an effective messenger finally, right?

Speaker 17 And so it's a question of messaging is we're not, we've been trying to get out of, he's also, every time he speaks, he goes, we've worked to remove criminals, immigrants from our, you know, from our state.

Speaker 17 You know, we do it all the time. And, but these are, but these, there was images today of ICE people chasing farm workers across a field.
This is not,

Speaker 17 this is weird to people, especially employers. It's, it's weird.
You know, it starts to hit businesses because of the, because Stephen Miller can't find enough immigrants.

Speaker 17 It's a similar, it reminds me a little bit of Doge. They didn't really find as much, right? They didn't find as much trouble.

Speaker 17 They have to go after law-abiding people who are here illegally, who are paying taxes. I feel like which of the dueling messages is going to work is,

Speaker 17 we'll see. We'll see.
We'll see.

Speaker 18 When ICE has to go to a Home Depot,

Speaker 18 a church or school.

Speaker 17 And a field.

Speaker 18 Doesn't in a field where people are picking our crops.

Speaker 17 They were chasing them across the field. They were picking like avocados, whatever the heck they were picking.

Speaker 18 But it's a larger point, and that is, are these the people we should be kicking out?

Speaker 17 I mean, are these

Speaker 18 church-going people working at Home Depot, picking your crops, are those really the people you want

Speaker 17 out?

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 17 so, like, I hope you're right.

Speaker 18 If I could, you can't manage or procure or manicure First Amendment speech.

Speaker 18 But if I had any advice, if I wanted to say, I've struggled my whole life with the difference between being right and being effective.

Speaker 18 And I think civil protest against, you know, the No Kings movement, it's very powerful.

Speaker 17 They're right.

Speaker 18 Where they lose all effectiveness and play into the enemy's hands is when they show up with masks palestinian flags and mexican flags bring the fucking american flags and be civil and be make it impossible i remember once you said to me i always used to say very provocative things and all of these things people were attacking me on twitter and you said something you said scott don't give them anything

Speaker 18 and right now i worry sometimes the protesters and i and I'll give you an example. I mean, I'm really Machiavellian.

Speaker 18 If I were part of this Trump MAGA weird fucked up Stephen Miller movement, I'd send out 100 people with Palestinian flags and masks to try and cause trouble.

Speaker 17 Yes, I get it.

Speaker 18 To invoke an overreaction.

Speaker 17 They would do exactly what they claim other people do, the false flags and all the nonsense.

Speaker 18 And to give people the impression that these people on the left are out of fucking control and

Speaker 18 get your anger glands going such that they're competent enough to do that.

Speaker 17 I don't think. I think they are not competent, actually.

Speaker 18 More American flags, less masks.

Speaker 17 I would agree, but I do think this has not been a protest that's given them enough stuff. Like the Floyd, the George Floyd one.

Speaker 17 I think they're disappointed at how civil it is. I know.
They don't have enough stuff. And if this two, if this, if this, if this no kings seems bigger than this military parade,

Speaker 17 it's a dueling messages here. So one of the things that doesn't help the Trump people, there's new reporting of this incredible piece in ProPublica on Trump's favorite autocrats, President Bukele of

Speaker 17 El Salvador. The U.S.
investigate a U.S. investigation found that Bukele colluded with MS-13.
Of course he did, even paying the gangs for votes, according to ProPublica.

Speaker 17 And despite his crime-fighting reputation, Bukele has his top aides blocking extraditions of MS-13 leaders to the U.S.

Speaker 17 This guy is working hand in glove. So U.S.
money is going to pay MS-13 people. This piece is...

Speaker 17 astonishing. And of course, no surprise whatsoever.
This guy is such a sleazy. He presents sleazy and he is sleazy.

Speaker 17 And the way he's gotten into, you know, this is like the plot of a Harrison Ford movie of a Jack, you know, a Clancy, a Tom Clancy thing, where the alleged good guy crime fighter is like up and up in the grill of drug dealers and other people.

Speaker 17 So this piece is really not great for Trump because it looks like Trump is paying for MS-13 leaders.

Speaker 17 I don't even think that'll rise to the top. I don't know.
I think it has a little minute. I sent it to a lot of people I know from El Salvador.
I'm like, you might want to read this.

Speaker 17 Like, because they do,

Speaker 17 it looks like he's not pushing back crime he's just like he's getting him one of the things in the story is he's getting people like there was a lot of crime in the streets and so there'd be dead bodies on the streets and what ms 13 is doing at his behest is burying them so it's you know it's sort of i don't this guy is i think this guy is going to be eventually cooked i mean what i was trying to do is i try and step back from the you know force if you will or or or get outside the matrix i think the biggest takeaway is i think this is all going to come down i think to your point i think the administration realized no this isn't working as well as we'd hoped.

Speaker 18 One, I think the big takeaways here are that

Speaker 18 I think, to your point, a lot of states are going to prepare for this. This has created, I think, a bit of

Speaker 18 a fascist indigestion. I do think more and more people are like, wow, is this really?

Speaker 18 I mean, all of these emergency, fake emergency orders to violate people's rights, it seems like it's going really far. Two, I do think that Newsom is now kind of the de facto party leader.

Speaker 18 But the biggest thing is that it's been, it will be a two-week distraction from thoughtful, robust discussion about, around this tax bill,

Speaker 18 which is really, will have much more impact on the nation than

Speaker 17 those. Absolutely.
But let me just say, and these polls that are coming out, the

Speaker 17 Quinnipec poll that show very bad polling for Trump on immigration. He's he's underwater on every issue, including the bill, right? Including Medicaid cuts, including immigration.

Speaker 18 I thought he was still positive on immigration. I thought he wanted that.

Speaker 17 No, no.

Speaker 17 It's not. He is way down.
And

Speaker 17 we'll see how the rest of them, but there's several polls where he's showing where people are, including what's more interesting is obviously Democrats are going to be against all this stuff, but Republicans are particularly irked.

Speaker 17 And they were irked by the Elon thing, too. That seemed to

Speaker 17 set them off.

Speaker 17 And so

Speaker 17 this polling is interesting is he's not, it doesn't give him strength with going into this bill because polling is showing that people don't like it, don't like the bill itself.

Speaker 17 And so I do think at some point the Republican members of Congress are going to look very carefully at these polls. And if Trump is not as strong as

Speaker 17 he seems,

Speaker 17 it'll take some shine off of him, I think. I think it absolutely does.
Because projection of strength when polling is showing lack of strength is to me a problem.

Speaker 17 Speaking of lack of anything, Trump says the U.S. and China have a trade deal again.
It's essentially the old deal,

Speaker 17 which going back to zero. He posted on True Social the deal is done pending final approval for both him and President Xi.
It's such nonsense.

Speaker 17 According to Trump, China will resume shipments of rare earth minerals, though the Wall Street Journal reports China put a six-month limit on those export licenses. The U.S.

Speaker 17 will back some of the export restrictions and scrap proposed visa limits on Chinese students. More taco, but tariffs will remain.
U.S.

Speaker 17 tariffs on Chinese goods will now total 55%, while Chinese tariffs on American products are 10%.

Speaker 17 We're back,

Speaker 17 I feel like we're back at square one. It's surprising.

Speaker 17 No one, of course, also that Trump is highly likely to push back his July 8th deadline to reach trade deals, according to Treasury Secretary Beth Sent.

Speaker 17 This is like spinning wheels. It's like, and you're back exactly where you started, essentially.

Speaker 18 Yeah, that's been our prediction all along that after all of this nonsense, after this erosion of brand equity of the U.S., after creating a brand association toxic uncertainty, we're going to end up kind of where we were before the tariffs.

Speaker 18 I would argue we may even be a little bit worse off.

Speaker 17 Worse off because of the brand is

Speaker 17 U.S. brand is broken.

Speaker 18 Well, but even on straight empirical terms, because I think China has recognized they have a very strong hand because of their, of all things, their rare earth mineral magnets, which I guess are key to automakers.

Speaker 17 They keep a lot of people. A lot of people.

Speaker 18 And they kind of have a monopoly on. And again, the calculus these guys just haven't been able to do is they look at both sides of the equation and who is bigger or where the sum is greater.

Speaker 18 But what they forget is that it's a different scale because China will starve people. You know, we freak out when our Netflix goes goes down for 30 minutes.

Speaker 18 It's just their tolerance for pain is much greater than ours and their leadership's ability or willingness to impose pain for national interests are just, you know, it's just such a different system.

Speaker 18 We

Speaker 18 say to our companies, you know, our companies that donate money to PACs, who get people nominated because of gerrymandering.

Speaker 18 So essentially you have kind of corporate profits, sort of are the most, at this point, are the most influential thing. America's run for profit.
You know, China's run for power.

Speaker 18 And that is they decide what would be best, according to the CCP, would be best for the long-term interests of China, according to them. And for them, the number one thing is we maintain power.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 it's different in kind of the long-term

Speaker 18 thinking, if you will. It's much more on China's side because they're not worried about quarterly earnings.

Speaker 18 They're not worried about BYD hitting its numbers this quarter for fear that BYD isn't going to give money to the CCB because basically all the money BYD has is in the CCB's

Speaker 17 control. Yeah, control.
So you know what he could have just done is settled the situation in Gaza and settled the situation in Ukraine. He looked, he'd get his famous Nobel Prize, right?

Speaker 17 Like that's all he had to do and shut the fuck up instead of all this manic. He confuses.

Speaker 17 There's an expression I use with people. I use it when I was a manager and I'm not a manager anymore, but that people that confuse activity with productivity, right?

Speaker 17 Like people that are manic and move around a lot, they look like they're doing things.

Speaker 17 It's sort of like look busy, Jesus is coming kind of thing.

Speaker 17 This guy confuses activity with productivity and none of this is productive whatsoever.

Speaker 17 And it makes us look stupider and it gives an enormous amount of tells to all kinds of people, whether it's Europeans or Chinese or whoever we're dealing with.

Speaker 17 Everyone can tell what's going to happen here.

Speaker 17 You know, we're world's worst poker player of all time. Like, really, the sucker, when they, when you don't know who the sucker in the room is, it is, as it's turned out, Trump.

Speaker 17 But it just, I find this just a ridiculous waste of our time and not good for the U.S. economy.
Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back.
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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back. Elon Musk says he regrets some,

Speaker 17 only some, of his recent posts. He didn't say which ones, about President Trump writing in an ex-post at 3 a.m.

Speaker 17 this week that, quote, they went too far, although he didn't exactly say which posts or what he meant and which ones.

Speaker 17 The public groveling comes after a private phone call with Elon reaching out to Trump late Monday, according to the New York Times. Vice President J.D.

Speaker 17 Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Waz were reportedly the peacemakers pushing Elon to repair his relation with Trump.

Speaker 17 When asked about Elon's post, Trump told told the New York Post, I thought it was very nice that he did that.

Speaker 17 I don't know what to say.

Speaker 17 I don't think he can hold on after if Trump does some things he doesn't like. I think he'll have another 3 a.m.

Speaker 17 something else happening, but we'll see.

Speaker 17 He's trying to turn his attention to Tesla, hyping the Robo-Taxi launch in Austin this next week. He says it could slide because Tesla is being super paranoid about safety.
Also,

Speaker 17 we'll talk about this advertising thing in a second, but talk about this apology. I mean, it's just Trump's never letting him back.
That's what I read from it.

Speaker 17 And Susie Wiles has played this beautifully in jacking this guy out of the picture. And by the way, speaking of polling, his polling is even worse than Trump's.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I think he's, I think right now he looks like a dog roaming around with one of those domes.

Speaker 18 You know, it's like, okay.

Speaker 17 I'm going to give you one of those.

Speaker 18 I've just been neutered and I look stupid and I'm upset and depressed. I think he's just walking around with his dog dumb right now.
He just he

Speaker 18 the president is more powerful than Elon. And I think he was under the impression that, you know, I'm, I'm invincible.
I'm rocket man. I'm Iron Man.
And

Speaker 18 he gets into a fight.

Speaker 18 It's a giant fucking distraction. He's not going to get anywhere near the West Lawn again unless it's highly catered and manicured.

Speaker 18 And I just thought it was so funny listening to all these Fox people talk about how sad it was the fight was. And they're like, they don't seem to be worried about Ukraine or Gaza.

Speaker 18 They don't, they just don't, but they're just so like heartbroken over the breakup

Speaker 17 of Musk and Chinese. They all turned on Musk in a second after being his biggest cheerleaders, which was hysterical to see.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Again, another,

Speaker 17 I don't know. I know.

Speaker 18 Sad. Another, another distraction.
Who cares?

Speaker 17 Yeah. And his Robo-Taxi thing is, I mean, it's incredible how many people are using Waymo, even though some of them got destroyed in Los Angeles.
But

Speaker 17 we'll see if he catches up.

Speaker 18 You're not going to the launch event?

Speaker 18 I mean, I was looking at it last night, 2015.

Speaker 18 He said it was going to be two years. And then every year since 2016, he said it's going to, self-drive is going to come.

Speaker 17 Every interview I've ever done with him, he's like, well, next year when we have full self-driving, it's going to come within the year.

Speaker 17 One of my interviews was in a lawsuit where he lied about it, right?

Speaker 17 And then he said the interview was fake. It was just crazy.
He said it so many times.

Speaker 17 And it got comical after a while. It's like, oh, this year, this year, is it going to be this year? And of course, we'll see.

Speaker 17 I'm sure they'll get them out on the streets because other people are deploying them. So he can just copy them.
But I feel like

Speaker 17 I don't think this is going to be the winning move for him. And also, for people who don't know,

Speaker 17 the Optimus robot thing is the other thing they're trying to do at Tesla. And the person who ran it just left.
There's all these people leaving Tesla.

Speaker 17 I think it's in a spiral.

Speaker 18 Well, he needs, it's going to be interesting because they have a launch launch event, which they delayed another couple of weeks. It's being done in a geo-fenced area of Austin to try and control it.

Speaker 18 But even he said Tesla is either going to be worth a lot more with self-autonomous and Kathy Woods out there saying that autonomous is the future and putting a

Speaker 18 thousand dollar price target on

Speaker 18 Tesla, or he said, or it's going to be worth next to zero.

Speaker 18 And if you were to value Tesla as just an automobile company and say, all right, it looks like they are losing slash lost the autonomous race.

Speaker 18 And you valued every Tesla at the same market cap as BYD, which is generous because BYD is doing better and seems to have a better car for less money.

Speaker 18 But if you gave Tesla the benefit of the doubt and said, okay, it's at least a BYD-like brand and gave them the same market cap per vehicle that BYD commands, it would mean that Tesla stock would decline by 95%.

Speaker 17 It's such a brand destruction. You know, I honestly, Scott,

Speaker 17 when I see them on the street, I don't let them in. I don't know why.
I just hate the brand now.

Speaker 17 And I like the brand. I really did like the Tesla brand.

Speaker 17 But I just don't like people in them. And I know that's unfair.
I feel like a jerk for doing that.

Speaker 17 You know, first time in a while I saw the Cybertruck in D.C., there were a bunch of them here at the beginning of the Trump era. And I saw one and I hadn't seen one in a while.

Speaker 17 And having seen it, not in a while, I was like, oh, what a terrible.

Speaker 17 Who didn't stop him and say, you can't do this? You cannot release this trap.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but just some compensation for that is it's good to know that right now there are more National Guard troops and Marines in L.A. than there are stationed in Syria or Iraq combined.

Speaker 17 Correct.

Speaker 18 I mean, talk about, if you're, if you're the president, for me, it always comes back to management. What is a manager supposed to do?

Speaker 18 You're supposed to deploy capital to a greater return than your competitive set. And this is how he is deploying the military capital.
He's taking it down in Syria and Iraq.

Speaker 18 He's not using his sway and power to force Israel to announce a multinational Arab force into Gaza and stop the destruction there.

Speaker 18 He's not figuring out a bipartisan legislation which he could get to put more teeth into the sanctions against Russia to get them to the table.

Speaker 18 He's sending in the National Guard to fucking Paramount Boulevard, to like Culver City. I mean, he does not know how to allocate capital.
I just don't.

Speaker 18 And at the end of the day, the president folks, who you want as a president is someone you don't hear about. And it's just a very good manager.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 yeah, and knows how to allocate more capital than any capital allocator in history. And this guy is just a terrible capital allocator.

Speaker 17 He never did. Come on, he was such a shitty business person.

Speaker 17 One of the things that my favorite part of, we'll go back to the selling thing, is all these people posting pictures of like having lunch in L.A. and like, it's terrible here.

Speaker 17 There is a lot of AI slop, by the way.

Speaker 18 I grew up in LA. I've texted all my friends and I said, what's going on there? How is it? And they're like, you're watching the same thing I am.
That's not.

Speaker 18 I mean, granted, a lot of my friends are pretty privileged. They're not living in downtown LA, but they're like, yeah, we haven't seen anything.

Speaker 17 Yeah. I have friends all over LA and they're like, this is fucking ridiculous.
But anyway, there's a lot of AI slop out there showing much worse than it is. It's just not true.

Speaker 17 A lot of the, a lot of the imagery that's being used. And Fox, of course, it's like...
it's Armageddon there.

Speaker 17 It's like, I feel like they're using clips from that movie, Escape from LA or something like that. Anyway,

Speaker 17 the second thing, this is interesting, because we're headed off to France for Con Lions.

Speaker 17 And it's the, or is it Con Lion? I don't know. Cannes.

Speaker 18 It's called Cannes. I know it's Cannes.

Speaker 17 It's Cann Lions, whatever. Can Lions.
We're going to France underpants.

Speaker 17 And advertising is the big deal here, but this was an interesting story. And I don't know if Linda Yakarina is going to be there, but I hope not to see her.

Speaker 17 Elon Musk's ex has made a habit of threatening advertisers with legal action if they don't sue you. I love that.

Speaker 18 Advertise with us or we'll sue you.

Speaker 17 X is really used threats of lawsuits. This is a Wall Street Journal story.
It was really interesting. Everybody, I'd heard this from a lot of people.

Speaker 17 So to secure at least six large advertisers that pressure campaigns targeted advertisers like Amazon, Verizon, Pinterest, Ralph Lauren, including some of the illegally, including, accusing them of illegally colluding in an ad boycott after Musk take over the platform.

Speaker 17 And the threats weren't empty. Pinterest declined to increase ad spending on X and found itself added to the ad boycott suit, which is they're going to lose.

Speaker 17 And as the world goes these days, the FTC is investigating whether antitrust laws were violated by coordinated boycotts of advertisers. So

Speaker 17 I think this is probably going to go away.

Speaker 17 What in the fuck, actual fuck, you have to like like you have to take my ads if I don't think it's a safe place.

Speaker 17 I'm sure they've made, tried to make safety improvements on that platform, but it's not working. It's not, it's not a safe place to advertise so easily.
It's so clearly not a safe place to advertise.

Speaker 17 What do you think about this? This is nuts.

Speaker 18 I mean, I know very little about X.

Speaker 18 Now I got off it two years ago, but NBC did a study and they found that over 150 verified premium accounts, I guess that's the blue check ones, have all posted or amplified pro-Nazi content. And

Speaker 18 I think the easiest way to get fired in media is to buy ads on X. Because if you buy ads on X,

Speaker 18 it's like going to work for the mob. There's no getting out.
It's like you're not allowed to leave. And what basically is happening here is there's a non-zero probability.

Speaker 18 If you begin advertising on X, if you decide to stop, you might end up in a lawsuit. They might sue you.
I can't think that's a good business strategy.

Speaker 18 I can't imagine how hard it must be to be, generally speaking, ad salespeople that end up at Cannes. They're either former athletes or hot women because that's who media buyers want to hang out with.

Speaker 18 And they're generally like 105. IQ, 135 EQ people.

Speaker 18 They're the fraternity rush chairmen. They weren't the president.
They weren't scholars. They're super social, super likable, nice people.

Speaker 18 and they make good money.

Speaker 18 Their colleagues hate them because they're the most overcompensated relative to their IQ and their work ethic. But they have, they're really attractive, and you know,

Speaker 18 they're nice people to hang out with. That job at X must be the worst job in the world right now.

Speaker 17 100, but threatening them, they don't like being threatened.

Speaker 18 Well, and I imagine most of the salespeople at X are not threatening people. They're not, they're probably just trying to sell fucking ear cleaner ads.

Speaker 18 Whatever it is,

Speaker 18 they're doing their best to get L'Oreal to test again on this platform that doesn't work.

Speaker 18 And then I would imagine a lot of advertisers who have no shortage of places to spend their precious ad dollars are like, boss, why would I advertise with you?

Speaker 18 Is someone going to call me and threaten to sue me if I decide to pause my campaign?

Speaker 17 Right, which I don't think that shit. Yeah, I think, listen.
Lindy Akina used to have a great reputation

Speaker 17 of this cadre of people. She's never going to work in this business.

Speaker 18 Will she need to, though? My guess is they're not dumb.

Speaker 18 He probably promised her enough fucking money or something like that.

Speaker 17 But you know how that works with him.

Speaker 17 People who work for him don't always end up in the best place.

Speaker 18 But it must be, but just realistically, Kara,

Speaker 18 he's been able to attract so many talented people to run different companies for him. I don't believe that

Speaker 18 his compensation system must be very generous.

Speaker 17 Possibly. Well, I've heard different things.
I've heard mixed things. A lot of people couldn't get out fast enough, and then they didn't get what they were paid.

Speaker 17 He does a combination of things. In this case, it is an embarrassment that someone who was a well-regarded advertising person is resorting to lawsuits in order to sell ads.

Speaker 17 And in a paranoid fashion, I've heard from lots of people that she truly believes that there was a, it was a conspiracy. And because she's in that world, she's sort of a Trumper and everything else.

Speaker 17 But it's just, it's an embarrassment, Linda. You used to be, I worked with her.
She was good. This is an embarrassment.
And she should be ashamed of herself, what she's doing. Anyway, she was good.

Speaker 17 She was really, she was the top one and or one of the top people. And she worked at NBC, is that right? She did.
I worked with her and she was, you know, she was an ad person, right?

Speaker 17 You know, though, that type. And I sure do.
And good at it. And people hang out with it.

Speaker 18 I like them.

Speaker 17 And good at good at it. But this is just, you have covered yourself in shame.

Speaker 17 And let me tell you, all your old friends say that to me. Anyway, let's go on a quick break.
We come back. We'll talk about Open AI's Google deal.

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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back with more news. OpenAI plans to use Google Cloud Service to meet its computing needs.

Speaker 17 The deal doesn't replace OpenAI's need for Microsoft's Azure, which used to be the company's exclusive partner.

Speaker 17 Google is not yet delivering compute to OpenAI, but the deal was reportedly signed last night. It's important.
They need more compute.

Speaker 17 In a similar story, Facebook is working with Scale AI, this very talented guy

Speaker 17 who's the founder of it, and trying trying to reboot their AI.

Speaker 17 The Lama stuff wasn't going as well as Mark Zuckerberg had expected, and he's now shook the trees there and is redoing it, which is good. He's good that way to do those things.

Speaker 17 And on the AI news front, OpenAI has delayed the release of its first open model in years, which is really expected this month. But it's pulling away.

Speaker 17 Even I've talked to meta people and other people, and they're like, OpenAI is pulling away in terms of features, constant features. So it's still a real race going on here.

Speaker 17 Google's extended voluntary buyouts, by the way, to U.S. employees in multiple divisions, cost-cutting measures to help fund for AI spending.
And they're all rejiggering.

Speaker 17 Even at Google, there's new people.

Speaker 17 They're reassessing who should be running this and what their focus should be, each of these companies.

Speaker 17 But they're all doing a lot. And

Speaker 17 this new eye research lab that Meta's doing is going to be dedicated to pursuing super intelligence. There's just a lot going on in the sector.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I thought both announcements, the announcement that open ai was going to work with google the google cloud kind of blew my mind because i would have thought that that microsoft would have captured all of that business and i i don't know if it's a falling out and open ai wanting to diversify their their compute supply chain or if according to microsoft microsoft is saying we just don't even have enough given how amazing and how dominant open ai is and we need more than one

Speaker 18 um more than one source of compute it just kind of blew my mind when i I heard that. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is that Google is now a newspaper company.

Speaker 18 I remember at the New York Times, we were constantly sending out letters saying a voluntary buyout.

Speaker 18 Google just sent out voluntary buyout letters to a ton of people and basically saying that these are the jobs that are most vulnerable to AI.

Speaker 18 And typically the way it waterfalls is that, all right, we offer you a buyout. And if you don't take this buyout of X, if you get fired in three months, you only get 0.5X.

Speaker 18 Now, the problem with these types of buyouts is the people, the best people leave. And the way you usually do these buyouts is you go to your top 10% and you say, FYI, you're on the inside.

Speaker 18 We're doing a buyout, buyout slash layoff, trying to encourage people to leave, but you're doing really well here. You're about to get promoted.
Just ignore the letter.

Speaker 18 That's the smart kind of buyout move is you go to the people you don't want to leave. The other thing they're doing is everyone talks about quiet quitting.

Speaker 18 The new quiet firing is back to work mandates.

Speaker 18 And if you'll notice, on the same day, Google announced a return to work mandate because they know they'll lose 10, 20, 30% of people who got really used to walking their dog in Prospect Park every afternoon.

Speaker 18 And so a lot of people will leave.

Speaker 18 So, but what's interesting is Google, which has got the greatest concentration of intellectual IP around AI, has real insight into where the economy and jobs are going to have said AI is going to eliminate a lot of these jobs.

Speaker 17 Which we've heard from a lot of companies.

Speaker 17 We've heard from a lot when even when we're together, we were with, I forget who it was, Diller or someone else,

Speaker 17 he was talking about it. All these companies have been talking about this.
And are on the front end. I think it's actually a good thing that Google does this.

Speaker 17 I think it's a good thing that Mark, everyone was sort of writing, oh, Meta's AI thing got shook up. I'm like, good.
Like they're doing it quickly, right? They're adding and subtracting people.

Speaker 17 He's, he's, Mark is a going for it kind of guy, like, right? He always like,

Speaker 17 Meta's not working, gone. Like that kind of thing.
And that's, that's his superpower, I think, is his control.

Speaker 17 And speaking of good managers, he is a good manager.

Speaker 17 And so it's interesting that people look at it as a bad thing. I don't think any of this is a bad thing.
I think it shows that people are sort of adjusting as they're extending, if that makes sense.

Speaker 17 Yep. Yep.
You know, it makes sense to do this. And the more these companies do this, the stronger they're going to be.

Speaker 17 But I do, pretty much everyone at the other companies, I've been talking to a lot of these other companies do acknowledge that

Speaker 17 Open OpenAI has been running away with it in terms of features moving faster, getting things done. Obviously, one of the worries at Meta is that ChatGPT has become the Kleenex, right?

Speaker 17 Just like Google became the word for search, that ChatGPT is now the word for this.

Speaker 17 And so can you catch up if

Speaker 17 one company represents,

Speaker 17 you know, that's what people think of when they think of AI. From a marketing point of view, it's an interesting moment, I think.

Speaker 18 I agree. I have nothing to add.

Speaker 17 Yeah, but I mean, it depends on how important it'll be to that. When have you heard that from me? I know.
Yeah, they're the Kleenex. Everyone's interesting.
All right.

Speaker 17 Lastly, there's two interesting little stories, which I thought we should talk about very briefly.

Speaker 17 ABC News has parted ways with senior national correspondent Terry Moran after he called President Trump and Stephen Miller world-class haters on X.

Speaker 17 If you remember, Moran was the one who did that testy MS-13 interview with Trump, who kept pretending a Photoshop thing was real.

Speaker 17 The network announced it would not renew Moran's contract after a 28-year stint, calling the Expost a clear violation of policies.

Speaker 17 As a reminder, ABC paid $60 million to settle case over comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos last year. Moran seems okay.

Speaker 17 He's already told followers he did a really delightful video that'll be on Substack shortly, sort of taking it well. Any thoughts on this?

Speaker 17 He shouldn't have posted that, largely because

Speaker 17 he was a beat reporter and was covering the White House.

Speaker 17 Even if he thought that, he should have kept it to himself. He could have done it in a different way by pointing to polls or things they've done or videos or other people talking about it.

Speaker 17 He shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but Dan Rather and Peter Jennings did much worse. But when the market was booming, they didn't fire people for this.
They just called him in and said, hey, boss, sucks when you're grown up.

Speaker 18 Don't do this again. So he wasn't fired by ABC.
He was fired by Alphabet and Meta, who are sucking so much oxygen out of the room of cable at Sported News that these guys are for

Speaker 18 looking for reasons to fire people and i i think this is

Speaker 18 quite frankly i think this is bullshit i i don't think this is how you treat people the guy worked there 28 years he was the kind of guy that in my mind sort of did the work and was good at what he did so what you do is you call him and you say you know what you made life hard for us business sucks um

Speaker 18 you need to announce that i i know i don't know i don't know terry i mean i know terry i don't know him well i think he was looking for his next gig abc needs to cut costs There's a way they could have done this without publicly shaming the guy and pretending to have fucking virtue.

Speaker 18 If the company was going, if the company's revenues were increasing 10 or 15 percent a year, they would have called him in and said, boss, you can't do this again.

Speaker 18 He would have said, fine, and they would have wink-winked see at the country club. But now they're all looking to cut costs.
So they pretend to be virtuous and have these journalistic standards.

Speaker 18 If, if Terry had been anchoring a news program where they had more and more opioid-induced constipation ads that were, they were increasing the ad rates faster than inflation, they would have found.

Speaker 17 It's Sky Rizzi is the ask, but go ahead.

Speaker 18 But they, they,

Speaker 18 Mark Zuckerberg fired him, not ABC. ABC is looking for any reason it can to lay off people and then pretend they're journalists.
Meanwhile, they're about to get fucked in the ass by, in a bad way,

Speaker 18 not the pleasurable way, by a fascist

Speaker 18 and bend the knee like every other media company that's scared to death of this guy right now, trying to stay out of his crosshairs. So,

Speaker 18 yeah, fine.

Speaker 18 When people work for you for 28 years,

Speaker 18 they're given do-overs. I agree.

Speaker 17 Scott, I think he's a talented bride, but he did put himself in a, given the history here recently, not a smart move on his part.

Speaker 17 I agree. He should have been just taken off for a little while, talked to, and then he would have had, I would have had a lot of time.

Speaker 18 Remember when Dan Rather walked off set and CBS went to black for, what was it, six minutes?

Speaker 17 Yes, I remember.

Speaker 18 He left the air.

Speaker 18 But they found excuses to keep Big Dan.

Speaker 17 Until he he did that lawsuit, that didn't work out so well.

Speaker 17 They definitely, I agree. I agree.

Speaker 17 When I saw it, I was like, oh, no, no, no. He's got a lot of people.

Speaker 18 All these companies talk about how we're a family and a team. You don't need a family or a team when you're doing well.
You need them when you fuck up. They should have treated him.

Speaker 18 He was there 28 years doing the work. You showed the guy a little bit more grace.
And if at the first false move that you fuck up, you get ceremoniously drawn and quartered, guess what?

Speaker 18 All of us are going to be unceremoniously fired at some point.

Speaker 17 Well, except now he's not because he's on his own. I'm like, welcome to the do whatever the fuck you do.
So I hope he does well. Yeah.
Welcome to Substack.

Speaker 18 Let's promote it.

Speaker 17 Do you know what it is? Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to bring him on on Scott-Free August.
Oh, I like that. Oh, that's great.
I'm going to bring in troublemakers, bringing in Scaramucci.

Speaker 17 I'm making troublemakers for you.

Speaker 18 I really like Terry because more than anything, he's very handsome.

Speaker 17 He's very handsome. He's a handsome man.
In any case, I agree with you.

Speaker 17 Given this environment, he shouldn't have done.

Speaker 18 ABC, you're so righteous. No, here's $10 million, dear fascist, dear leader.

Speaker 36 Oh, ABC, good for you, Bobby Iger.

Speaker 18 You're a man of principle. Here's the thing.

Speaker 17 I have never thought of anywhere I worked as my family. Have you? I've never had been under that delusion.
You have a much more romantic version of companies, don't you?

Speaker 18 Yeah, but my companies are smaller, and I get very strong paternal reward from my companies because it's a bunch of young people. So I get very,

Speaker 18 I'm very rapacious the first year or two years. I'm like, you got it.
This is like the Navy SEALs. Anyone can try out, but most of you aren't going to be here in a year.
But the people

Speaker 18 I've worked with, I mean, you know my people. I've been working with my people.

Speaker 17 Oh, no, you have. I had 20 years, the same people working for code.
I get it. I get that.
And I never would have treated them like this. But it's a really interesting thing is that a lot of these

Speaker 17 I kind of would rather the Google thing, like, okay, it's not working. We're shifting.
It sort of feels cleaner to me in a lot of ways.

Speaker 17 And not be offended by it. But Terry Moran is a very talented broadcaster, and we wish him incredible

Speaker 17 wealth and health and whatever the heck. Um, and don't feel bad, Terry.
Don't worry about it. Fuck them if they can't take a joke.
Anyway, you'll like it better on the outside. It's much more fun.

Speaker 17 That's right.

Speaker 18 Come on in, the water's fine. Independent, independent.
Well, you're an independent journalist. Independent, like whatever it is I do.

Speaker 17 Yeah. You're going to enjoy it.
It's fun. Yeah.
Yeah. It's true.
You're not a journalist, but you're something. I don't know what you want.
I'm something. You're a turducken.

Speaker 17 You're a turducken of some sort.

Speaker 18 I'm not alien from close encounter.

Speaker 18 It's like, we don't understand him, but we think he's nice.

Speaker 17 Yeah. In other Disney news, this is interesting, though.
Disney and Universal have sued AI image generator Mid Journey, which is a people really don't like Mid Journey for copyright infringement.

Speaker 17 The lawsuit alleges Mid Journey helped itself to countless copyrighted works to train some of its software, while news organizations, record layers, and others have filed similar suits.

Speaker 17 This marks the first suit by a major Hollywood studio. This is a good move on their part.
Midjourney, just like, this, you know, doing shit with Mickey is not cool for or whatever.

Speaker 17 Mickey's out of, maybe he's out of copyright, but I think it's parts of him is, um, parts of Mickey is.

Speaker 17 But what do you think about this?

Speaker 18 When I was in the fraternity, one of my fraternity brothers or one of my close friends was the head of campus events at UCLA or involved in campus events.

Speaker 18 And he ran this ad that showed for

Speaker 18 Simba, they were doing a screening of the Lion King, and he showed Mickey Mouse riding Simba in the Daily Bruin.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 we got a call from, I think it was Disney's lawyer saying, hi, just FYI, you'll be served a subpoena. We wanted to give you some Ford notices of courtesy, but,

Speaker 18 you know, you're not allowed to do this. And I'm like, thinking I can solve every problem.
And so, of course, we did like three bong loads.

Speaker 18 And then I said, I know Michael Ovitz was president of our fraternity. He was president of ZBT, UCLA.
We'll call him. We know, we know these powerful people.
I know how to solve this, right?

Speaker 18 I think I can can fix any problem. Total, total arrogant douchebag American male.

Speaker 18 And I'm like, but first we need to get a high.

Speaker 18 So we call the lawyer and

Speaker 18 we say, look, we apologize. This was clearly wrong.
We won't do it again. But we were fraternity brothers with Michael Ovitz, thinking that would carry real weight.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 we won't do it again. And we apologize.
We're just, you know, just a bunch of college kids. And the counsel said, the general counsel was like, oh,

Speaker 18 my daughter goes to UCLA. And we ended up, we know her, we had a nice conversation, da, da, da.
He's like, he was like, anyways, guys, he goes like back to the lawsuit.

Speaker 18 He's like, he's like, he's like, guys, I'll see you in court. You don't fuck with the mouse.
And then he hung up.

Speaker 17 And what happened? You took it down, right?

Speaker 18 And here's the bottom line. The best companies

Speaker 18 usually invest a lot, have good people, and they're also rapacious about the defense of our IP.

Speaker 18 And as I go full circle for my fraternity in this situation, this is a moment for content creators to absolutely rally together and not do one-off deals, but to get someone really mean and really angry and a lot of law firms and charge everyone a certain amount of money and go after all these guys and say, okay, if we see you're crawling our books, our content, our songs, our

Speaker 18 speeches, anything, we're coming for you. And you gather it all similar to what the artists do around their rights labels where they say, you can, and then we'll license it to you.

Speaker 18 We're going to make a lot of money here. You guys are making a lot of money.
That's fine. If you want to use all of Penguin Portfolio Random House's archive of every single book they have, fine.

Speaker 18 And then we're going to figure out a deal with our authors. We're going to do this for all artists.
We're going to, by the way, I met one of my,

Speaker 18 I literally met my favorite artist last night. We'll come back to that because I know you're dying to talk more about me.
But this is a moment.

Speaker 18 We passed that moment about 20 years ago, letting Google crawl our shit. And now it's too late.
This is that moment in AI. All of these guys

Speaker 18 should be binding together. Everyone from Axel Springer to News Corps to the Royal Academy of Arts to everyone that has intellectual property.

Speaker 17 McDiller said a year ago, a year and a half ago.

Speaker 18 100%.

Speaker 18 And I said it a year and a month ago. Thank you very much.
So, but they need one, they need to speak with one voice and they need to be very aggressive in the pushback here.

Speaker 17 All these little efforts pushing back. Reddit filed a lawsuit last week.

Speaker 18 They all need to come together.

Speaker 17 They do. Anyway, you're 100% right.
100% right. Well, we'll see if they do.

Speaker 17 So the mouse, we like this move, which you did to Terry.

Speaker 17 Not great.

Speaker 18 You didn't want to hear about my favorite artist?

Speaker 17 Oh, well, who's your favorite artist?

Speaker 18 Very quickly. So I went to this very, very fancy event last night.
I went to the Royal Academy of Arts, like Summer Gala last night. You know, I don't like to go out.

Speaker 17 Do you wear spats?

Speaker 18 I was forced to go out. And

Speaker 18 I only own one piece of art. I don't buy wine or art because all my friends, as they got rich, started buying art and wine.
And I'm like, I'm just not that guy.

Speaker 18 But someone very important to me when i was in istanbul with them took me to see uh this exhibition said i know you'll just love this guy even though he knows i'm not into art and it was a guy named grayson perry and his art he has do you know that big orange you probably know better than i do you know that big orange sketch etching i have in my

Speaker 18 living room And it's called Map of a Politician. And I just fell in love with it.
And then this person for my birthday bought it for me. And it was the only piece of art I own.

Speaker 18 And he's a really interesting dude. Did you buy any? Oh, no, I didn't.
No, I literally own one. I own two pieces.
I own one piece of art and one photograph.

Speaker 18 The piece of art makes me feel closer to the person who bought it for me and I love it. I have a photograph of Otto Frank and returning to where his family was.

Speaker 18 And whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, I just go look at that photograph. But anyways, he was there last night and I got to meet him.
And that was really exciting. He's a really lovely manner.

Speaker 18 But anyways, I got to meet the artist of the one piece of art I own.

Speaker 17 Oh, that's nice. That's ugly Scott.
Freaking are just evolving into such a lesbian. It's fantastic.

Speaker 18 Aren't I? By the time I'm 90, I'm going to be like, I'm going to have manners. I'm going to be able to read the room on my 100th birthday.

Speaker 17 Journey of Scott Gallery.

Speaker 17 All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

Speaker 18 He's a human boy.

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Speaker 38 Many of the best things we've learned have actually come through failures.

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Speaker 17 Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

Speaker 18 I sort of had kid gloves around this, but well, well,

Speaker 17 what was that one prediction?

Speaker 18 What's that noise?

Speaker 17 Say that, do that noise again.

Speaker 17 What is it? You just, why did you just make that noise?

Speaker 18 I don't know. I have a prostate exam later today and I'm just practicing.
Okay.

Speaker 18 Elbows on the table. Elbows on the table.

Speaker 17 That's all I know.

Speaker 18 Run your hands through my hair. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 I think Gavin Newsom is now coming out of this, the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, and that was a void the size of the freaking Grand Canyon.

Speaker 17 You, as you've noted. Now, should he declare for his presidency? I was thinking this.
I almost texted him and said you should declare for his presidency. He has.
Right now.

Speaker 18 He has. He has.

Speaker 17 Actually.

Speaker 18 And then start making pronouncements no probably not yet because it would warrant but he's already he's

Speaker 18 the people who should declare presidency the people that nobody knows because they'll get a ton of he he is already the de facto candidate by virtue of what's happened this week and he should start and he also and i said this a few months ago him bringing charlie kirk on and new kingrich onto his podcast as much as the taliban of the left hates that that was the right move it was just a bad interview scott i don't have a problem with him having it on it just he didn't do a good job but go ahead i think he's the de facto leader of the Democratic Party right now coming out of this too.

Speaker 17 Can I ask, can I add something? Who do you think if he was running? I was thinking if he ran, his vice president should either be Pete Budigej or someone I saw the other night, Gina Ramundo.

Speaker 17 Anyway, those are my ideas.

Speaker 18 I think she's fantastic.

Speaker 17 She is amazing.

Speaker 17 She's just sharp as a friggin' tack.

Speaker 18 If you want someone that's good for the economy and just does the work,

Speaker 18 she's that person.

Speaker 17 It's a question of she may run for president, by the way.

Speaker 18 A woman will not be the Democratic nominee and nor should she be.

Speaker 18 if we have another woman lose for the third time carrier you're not gonna have a female president for 50 years i thought she would as much as i think she is utterly capable of being president i thought she should be the vice president for gavin newson that would be a really interesting let me be looksist and sexist in one fell swoop i can guarantee you not one person the democratic nominee will not be under five foot ten no president in the last hundred years has been under five foot ten

Speaker 18 he's big we are a little bit handsome man he's a handsome man that's that's my point i hate to say it's a handsome man the first we will have a female president she will be a republican And the key attribute she will bring is a reputation that if your family runs a stop sign, she'll drone your ass.

Speaker 18 Yes. She will be the first female president of the U.S.
will have to be someone so fucking scary.

Speaker 17 She'll drone your ass. Well, that would have been Liz Cheney, right? That would have been in the old days.

Speaker 18 Liz is probably the closest we could have had to an electable female president. Someone else will come along.
She would join us. Anyways, it's not going to be a Democrat.

Speaker 18 And the Democrats are not going to take their chances on a gay man. They're not going to take their chances on a woman.
They're not going to take their chances on someone who's less than 5'10.

Speaker 18 I'm sorry. That's the bottom line.

Speaker 18 Anyways, as VP, that's a really good one.

Speaker 17 Just play that game for a second.

Speaker 18 I'd probably macho it up and bring in like a former military person.

Speaker 18 I don't know. Mark Kelly.
There's a lot of, there's so many good VP candidates.

Speaker 18 I think,

Speaker 18 yeah.

Speaker 18 I don't know. They'll figure out what states they need help in.
Who do you like?

Speaker 17 I think there's a lot of interesting people.

Speaker 17 I don't know yet because I think westmore is always talked about and most feared by the right that's for sure he's very good i still like you know in my life a michael bennett would be such a good president um i i always think of who'd be a good president of course that doesn't matter anymore and the celebrity matters probably i i think i i when i ran into gina rondo the other day i was like oh she's so impressive she's so impressive you know who we just had on uh

Speaker 18 on the raging moderates pod yesterday was richie toros oh i don't i'm not a fan what Not a fan.

Speaker 17 Sorry. Oh, my God.
I love that guy. I think he's so performative.

Speaker 17 I still keep thinking, I agree with you.

Speaker 18 Raised by a single mother, struggled with depression.

Speaker 17 Not impressed. I don't like him.
Oh, by the way, let me say,

Speaker 17 by the way, our producers are saying there have been presidents under 5'10.

Speaker 17 In the last hundred years? Who? Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 18 Jimmy was 5'10?

Speaker 17 Under, I guess. Yeah, must have been.

Speaker 18 That's what our producers did today.

Speaker 17 What did you do? 5'9, 0.5, 5'9, 0.5. I don't know how tall Harry Truman was.
Okay.

Speaker 17 1.7. That wasn't a particularly successful presidency, even though he had a great post-presidency.
Harry Truman, 5'9.

Speaker 17 And he came to office because the president died.

Speaker 18 5'90. Jimmy Carter was 5'10.

Speaker 17 Oh, he says 9.5. All right.
Well, whatever. He's that tall.
He wasn't tall.

Speaker 18 Whatever. All that matters is I'm eight inches.

Speaker 17 Oh, my God. Okay.

Speaker 18 I won't tell you my nickname in the fraternity. I won't tell you my nickname in the fraternity.

Speaker 17 Don't force me to tell you my nickname in the fraternity, Kara. It's tripod.

Speaker 17 So you've already told me.

Speaker 18 God, we're like an old couple.

Speaker 17 I know we are.

Speaker 17 Give me the Republican candidate then.

Speaker 18 No, it's going to be, I think it's going to be J.D.

Speaker 17 Vance. I do not think that.

Speaker 18 No, go ahead.

Speaker 17 It's either going to be Marco Rubio or like a Glenn Yunken. That's my feeling.

Speaker 18 Yunkin's the guy who would win.

Speaker 17 Well, I'm just saying. Although he hasn't had the most spectacular Virginia situation.

Speaker 18 But Trump's going to have so much power that he'll basically, unless he has a huge erosion in his base he'll be able to pick the person i think it'll be i don't think it'll be i think oh

Speaker 17 he likes fans i don't think he likes you don't think he likes fans fans is unlikable he really is he's just he repels voters they need an interesting looking person it's got to be like a youngin' or and trump wants to keep it there so it's not going to be his son who forget that i mean he knows he's a loser um

Speaker 17 probably

Speaker 17 it's got to be it's got to be rubio or something like that. Something like that.

Speaker 18 I think Rubio is too short.

Speaker 17 All right. Okay.
Anyway, he's also somewhat charmless, too. Also, that's true.
When he said Lil Marco, I thought, mm-hmm, that is correct. Oh, wait.

Speaker 18 So, my prediction, my actual prediction is that

Speaker 18 the worst, I think probably the worst acquisition of the last decade in terms of value destruction or overpaying happened last week. Open AI's acquisition of the design firm, I think it's called IO.

Speaker 17 Oh, yes, Johnny Ives.

Speaker 18 I think Johnny Ives is fantastic.

Speaker 18 Just to be clear, company with no products gets acquired for $6.5 billion for a guy who is

Speaker 18 a genius designer.

Speaker 18 He deserved all his due.

Speaker 18 Sorry, boss, that's not worth $6.5 billion.

Speaker 17 He's cosplaying Steve Jobs.

Speaker 18 This thing will be written down by,

Speaker 17 let me be clear.

Speaker 18 Iconic legendary designer, maybe even worth like $100 million, which means a $6.4 billion write-down. And in addition, OpenAI is going to find that

Speaker 18 designing products, they'd be much better off. Let me save them some time, partner with hardware firms.
Right.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 18 you thinking that you're going to bring in this guy Richie-like genius who dresses incredibly well and rightfully is considered one of the great designers of all time is going to figure out a way for you to get into products.

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 18 A very charming guy.

Speaker 17 He is. He was the last speaker at Code, along with Lorene, Powell Jobs, and Tim Cook.

Speaker 18 Yeah. by the way, amazing.
I'm not,

Speaker 18 I'm not this, I'm not.

Speaker 18 The whole thing, when the two of them did this promo video on the acquisition, and it was so much like, I'm just a billionaire standing in front of a billionaire wanting to be trillionaires.

Speaker 17 I mean, it was just so

Speaker 17 strange. It was strange.
Whatever, let's give it to them. They've done a nice job over there.
All right.

Speaker 17 We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.
Go to nymag.com/slash pivots to submit a question for the show or call call 85551 pivot.

Speaker 17 Elsewhere in the Cara and Scott universe, this week on Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with Catherine Ann Edwards, PhD economist and columnist for Bloomberg News.

Speaker 17 She weighs in on the latest jobs data and unpacks how the economy has reacted to Trump's policies. Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 17 What we are seeing is the effect of uncertainty. And uncertainty is all about idling.
I'm not going to move much in either direction until I know which way the wind is blowing.

Speaker 17 So I'm not going to hire that many people. I'm not going to fire that many people.
I'm not going to make massive investments, but I'm not going to pull back from the ones that I have.

Speaker 17 I'm just waiting in place to understand what the world is going to look like. And that has been the economy really since September.
Really, very, absolutely true.

Speaker 17 No one knows what to do because he's crazy.

Speaker 17 Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Scott will be back next week from France, where I will be charging things to Scott's room

Speaker 17 very soon. Very, very soon.
Overpriced, whatever it happens to be. But that will be the charge there, Scott.
We'll be back next week from France, in fact. Scott, read us out.

Speaker 18 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Joy Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Intertod introduced this episode.

Speaker 32 Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms.

Speaker 18 Severo, and Dan Shallon. Deshaun Curat is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 14 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine, Vox Media.

Speaker 18 You can subscribe to the magazine and nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech

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The Newsom-Trump Beef Heats Up

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